The ship was pulled off it’s grounding about 10:40 p.m. Saturday after Coast Guard crews, divers, welders and private tug boats worked 18 hours to free the vessel from a shoal about 600 feet north of the breakwall.

The McKee Sons made for Sturgeon Bay, Wis. with the help of several private tugs. It ran aground about 5:45 a.m. Saturday.

Coast Guard officers from the Manistee station said the vessel was freed with “minimal pollution,” although some engine oil residue made it into the lake. The ship was carrying an estimated 49,000 gallons of diesel fuel aboard when she ran aground.

The grounding damaged a shaft in the vessel’s engine room, causing it to begin taking on water at the rate of about two gallons per minute. There were no reported injuries and the vessel was de-watered by pumps on-board and supplied by the Coast Guard.

Representatives with the vessel’s owners, Grand River Navigation Co., of Avon Lake, Ohio, declined to comment on the grounding other than to say they are conducting an internal investigation into the matter.

The company is a member of the Lake Carriers Association, which has been vocal about a "deepening dredging crisis" on the Great Lakes they say is threatening the shipping industry due to insufficient federal funding needed to dredge more than 17 million cubic yards of sediment clogging ports and waterways.

The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers last month awarded a $333,508 contract to MCM Marine Inc. of Sault Ste. Marie for the dredging of Manistee Harbor, although the work, which is scheduled to wrap up by late April, has not begun yet, said Lynn Rose, Detroit District Corp. spokesperson.

Nobody has officially pinpointed lack of dredging as the culprit in the grounding, but the area where the vessel was stuck appears to be shallower than the shipping channel according to a 2011 harbor survey map on the Army Corps website.

“There may be something else going on here. Usually they know (the channel), so there aren’t that many groundings.

“We get one or two per year” for all the Great Lakes harbors under the Detroit District authority, Rose said.

The city of Manistee has had to lobby heavily for federal dredging funds in the past.

The deep draft harbor entrance is 25 feet deep and approximately 80,000 to 120,000 cubic yards of material must be dredged on a two to three year cycle, according to the Detroit District website. The harbor was last dredged in 2010.

The ship was blocking about 30 percent of the harbor channel during the incident, which Coast Guard officers said drew a throng of gawkers to the nearby beaches.

The 579-foot McKee Sons of Cleveland appears to be somewhat prone to groundings. Built in 1945 as a fast troop transport, the vessel was converted in 1953 to a self-unloading steamer until 1991 when her propulsion systems were removed and replaced by a tug ironically named “Invincible.”

The tug/barge ran aground in 2000 on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, OH., and in 2010 on the Detroit River near Grosse Ile.